It's Just Natural
by Hive Mentality
Summary: Even though he never talks, the Losers always seem to know exactly what Cougar's thinking. How they do it, Aisha has no idea. And it's driving her crazy. Also, implied Cougar/Jensen if you squint. That was actually an accident, but I'm okay with that.


**This was inspired by a particular bit in the comic that amused me, but it's still mostly based on movie-verse in my mind because I tend to favor the characterization in the movie. I guess it doesn't matter either way, so enjoy!**

Aisha sighed as she pulled her hair tie out for the fourth time in a few hours. It had been getting a little long, so she'd decided to cut it. Unfortunately, she'd cut it a tad short in places—knives were not exactly the barber's favorite tool—and her hair kept slipping out of the hair tie.

"Aisha. Stop messing with your hair." Clay grumbled from where he stood by the couch. Cougar glanced up at her, and quickly returned to cleaning his gun. She shot Clay a pointed look in the mirror.

"What's it matter?" she chided, "It's not like its hurting _you._"

"It's not hurting me, its annoying me." He snapped, "Why don't you just leave it down?" Aisha paused to clamp the hair tie between her teeth, and she pulled her hair together and tied it back.

"It's too long. Gets in the way. You wouldn't understand." She replied. Clay rolled his eyes, but didn't respond. There was a long pause, in which she thought that he'd given up, before Clay responded:

"You have a dirty mind."

This caught her off guard—she couldn't fathom how that made her have a dirty mind, but apparently it did. She was about to tell him off, when the sniper chuckled to himself. He and Clay exchanged a look, before Clay continued, "Cut it out. You're being immature."

Aisha glanced between the two. That was odd. She hadn't seen him react at all but… maybe she'd missed it in the mirror.

OoOoOoOoOoO

She'd been cleaning her gun in the almost-quiet of the hotel room. The only noise was that of a clicking keyboard, because although Cougar wasn't distracting himself with anything, he didn't talk much anyway, and Jensen was too engrossed in whatever he was doing to talk—thank God.

This silence continued for nearly half and hour, with a steady, consistent clicking coming from Jensen's direction the entire way through and then, abruptly, the sound stopped. When she glanced up, Jensen was staring at Cougar, who was staring out the window. After the tech watched him for a moment, he went back to his computer. It wasn't a minute before he let out an exasperated sigh.

"Would you just be _patient_? I'm in the middle of something!" To say she was surprised was an understatement—Cougar wasn't even looking in his direction, and he _definitely _didn't seem impatient. After a few seconds of typing, Jensen slammed his laptop shut in a huff. "_Fine! _Okay? Jesus, I can't even finish what I'm doing…" he went off into a mumbled tangent as he headed for the door; the sniper followed closely after him.

Now she _knew _that he hadn't reacted this time. Not one bit. Now there was definitely something wrong with this picture, and she was going to figure it out if it killed her.

OoOoOoOoOoO

This time, she was fully willing to admit that yes, she _was_ watching Cougar, and yes, she _was_ trying to figure out what kind of "tell" it was that the others were using, because she hadn't seen any sign of it.

They were all together, eating pizza and playing poker—if she was going to figure it out, now would be the time. Jensen, around a mouthful of pizza, turned to Pooch and mumbled something incoherent. Pooch shot him a look, and he quickly swallowed before asking again:

"I thought you weren't going to be here tonight—date with the wife?" Pooch shrugged.

"Ante up." Clay said, setting the deck of cards to the side. Everyone complied.

"She canceled—said she had "a thing" to do."

"A thing, huh?" Clay asked.

"Yeah, I'm not really sure what that even means." Pooch responded, he fumbled with his cards for a moment before, quite suddenly, turning on Cougar. She couldn't believe it.

"Hey, don't even _go _there! That's my wife you're talking about and she would never—" All at once Aisha slammed the heels of both hands onto the table, cutting him off mid-sentence.

"He didn't _talk _about anything!" She snapped, ignoring the blank and confused looks from everyone—Cougar included. "I mean seriously, how the _hell _do you all do that?" She continued, exasperated, and the group exchanged looks.

"Do… what?" Jensen ventured after a long pause.

"You all talk to him—_for _him—and there's no way you can tell what he's thinking, because I've _tried_, but you _keep doing it!"_ she sighed, collecting herself and drumming her fingers on the table. She tried to ignore the sniper's smirk, which threatened to bring her blood back up to a boil. "It's driving me nuts. How do you do it?" The question was met with another exchange of looks, a chorus of "uhhs", and a couple shrugs.

"I'd never thought about it." Jensen said, and he threw a few bills into the pot, "It's just natural, I guess."

"Natural? It's _natural_?" Aisha stressed. "Are you kidding me?" Clay chuckled and continued to play.

"Aisha, when you've been around for as long as the rest of us have, I'm sure you'll understand." He said and, with a flourish, he threw his cards down and went for the pot.

"Four of a kind!" the others groaned and threw their cards down in frustration. Aisha did as well.

"That's a horrible answer! And Also," she moved to grab the wad of bills away from Clay. "Straight flush." Aisha ignored the accusations of foul play and pocketed the cash without a second thought. "I think I'm done for tonight."

"What?" Pooch shouted, "We just started! You didn't even give us a chance to win our money back!"

"Yeah!" Jensen added, "You have _got _to be cheating—that's why you always win, right? I'm right aren't I?" Aisha paused, a smirk playing across her lips.

"I'd never thought about it… it's just _natural_, I guess."


End file.
